Author: M Barbu

Pakistan-TTP Talks: A Bleak Future – OpEd

The Past

In April 2017, Ehsanullah Ehsan, a senior spokesperson of Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan [TTP] who subsequently joined its breakaway faction Jamaat-ul-Ahrar [JuA] supposedly, ‘surrendered’ to Pakistan army. It was a great moment for Rawalpindi and the then Director General [DG] of Pakistan army’s media wing Inter Services Public Relations [ISPR] Maj Gen Asif Ghafoor proudly announced how “The state is re-establishing its writ,” adding that “No element can challenge the state if the state has the will to weed out dangerous elements.” He also said that “There can be no bigger achievement for Pakistan than the fact that our biggest enemies are now realising the error of their ways and are turning themselves in,” a unquestionable assertion that even Rawalpindi’s staunchest detractors had to accept.

Libye: près de 4000 migrants arrêtés en Libye ces derniers jours

En Libye, une vaste opération anti-drogue a été menée vendredi 1er octobre à Tripoli. La police libyenne a arrêté un grand nombre de migrants dans la banlieue de la capitale. Dans un communiqué, le procureur général explique que ces personnes sont soupçonnées d’être impliquées dans le trafic « de stupéfiants, d’alcool et d’armes à feu ». L’ONG Norwegian refugee council, elle, dénonce une opération qui vise surtout à arrêter des migrants et réfugiés.

Afghan resistance has sanctuary in Tajikistan, but fighting Taliban a ‘non-viable prospect’

The Financial Times reported last week that numerous Afghan opposition leaders such as the famous Panjshir Valley commander Ahmad Massoud have fled to neighbouring Tajikistan and that they hope to use this safe haven as a base to fight the Taliban. But experts caution that the prospects are poor for any such attempt to continue the anti-Taliban resistance.

IEA say they have raided Daesh hideout north of Kabul

Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan (IEA) forces raided a Daesh (ISIS-K) hideout north of Kabul on Friday, killing and arresting an unspecified number of militants, an IEA spokesman said.

Since the IEA’s takeover of Afghanistan in mid-August, there has been an increase in attacks by Daesh militants targeting IEA members.

The IEA and Daesh are enemies, and the attacks have raised the specter of a wider conflict between the long-time rivals.

Iraq’s Kurdish regional leader Barzani defends Turkey’s Syria operation

Nechirvan Barzani, a powerful Kurdish leader in northern Iraq, argues that Turkey is targeting terrorists, not ‘the Kurds’.

The international outcry against the Turkish operation, which aimed to eradicate YPG presence from border areas in northern Syria, was based on one false premise: that the operation is targeting ‘the Kurds’, not terrorists. Now, Nechirvan Barzani, a powerful Kurdish leader, in Iraq has said that the Turkish military action has nothing to do with the Kurds, but is aimed at the PKK.

“Turkey’s problem, in the beginning, was not Kurds in Syria, it was the PKK. They were clear in saying one thing: ‘We cannot bear seeing the flag of the PKK on our borders with Syria,’” Barzani said, during a panel organised by the Erbil-based Middle East Research Center (MERI).

The YPG is the Syrian wing of the PKK, which has waged a decades-long terror campaign against the Turkish state, leading to tens of thousands of deaths across the country.

“Turkey had one demand, for Kurds to distinguish themselves from the PKK. Unfortunately, the PKK wanted to get legitimacy through Syrian Kurds,” Barzani said.

Barzani believes that the Turkish operation eventually happened “because of this wrong policy” conducted by the YPG in northern Syria.

The YPG has claimed large territories across northern Syria, manipulating the Syrian civil war as a pretext to form so-called ‘cantons’ in mostly Kurdish-populated areas.

The terror group took advantage of its longstanding relationship with the Assad regime to rule over Syrian Kurds, whom Damascus trusted to limit Kurdish opposition to the regime after reaching a deal with PKK leadership, located in northern Iraq’s Qandil mountains.

An extraordinary tale: The YPG/PYD rises

This section outlines broad contextual factors that help to explain the YPG/PYD’s rise to power during the early years of the Syrian conflict. It seeks to understand what circumstances enabled the organisation to achieve remarkable gains and autonomy in the space of just a few years after decades of repression by the Syrian regime of most domestic Kurdish political activity. As a PYD representative put it: ‘Let us go back to before 2011. The PYD was forbidden in Syria and Turkey. You can say that the majority of the PYD was locked up in regime prisons. In Damascus? In all provinces!’[11] Our analysis suggests that at least five storylines must be woven together to explain the rise of the YPG/PYD in the early years of the Syrian civil war, regardless of the specific strategies the group has pursued since then (these are analysed in Section 2).

A first element of the story are the policies of marginalisation, Arabisation and repression that Gamal Abdel Nasr applied to the Kurdish population of Syria after 1958 (during the United Arab Republic) and Syria’s various Ba’ath regimes after 1963. Lasting for decades, such policies broke up many communities in Syria’s Kurdish areas through a mix of symbolic and material measures, ranging from re-naming cities and villages.[12] keeping tens of thousands of Kurds stateless, enacting demographic changes, purposeful underdevelopment, and the incarceration of political dissidents.[13] It should be noted that the autocratic nature of the various Ba’ath regimes, especially under the Assads, created a generic level of repression across Syrian society in which Kurdish-specific repression was nested.[14] Moreover, Syrian Kurds could be part of the state apparatus and army as long as they fully embraced the regime and relegated their Kurdishness to the background.[15] Nevertheless, the regime did single Syrian Kurdish communities out for particularly intense and targeted repressive treatment out of concern that the country’s most substantial non-ruling minority might threaten its hold on power. Since the regime perceived the Kurds as not fitting the Arab nature of the Syrian state, the loyalty of this group was in doubt and its ‘othering’ facilitated a prism of repression to take hold.[16] For the purpose of this report, the relevance of these policies is that they created a climate of fear and distrust among Syrian Kurdish communities and political leaders. This climate was maintained by the presence of widespread regime intelligence informant networks.[17]

A visual display of YPG-PKK linkages at the Samalka border crossing between Iraq and Syria

A Syrian activist described the climate this engendered in the following manner: ‘Back in 1977, when Hafez al-Assad was in power, […] if you spoke Kurdish, or if they saw a Kurdish book with you, that was enough to arrest you: then you were a threat to state security. More than 250,000 Syrian Kurds did not have passports, let alone civil rights. My father is a Syrian national, but his sister and her children are not. Moreover, the regime removed Kurds to bring about demographic changes. They brought Arabs from Aleppo and Raqqa to our territory, took land from Kurds and gave it to the Arabs. Under Hafez al-Assad, no fewer than 68 leaders of the Kurdish democratic parties have been detained without trial.’[18]

Syrian Militant and Former Al Qaeda Leader Seeks Wider Acceptance in First Interview With U.S. Journalist

Over most of two decades, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani’s life has been a roadmap of Islamist militancy in Iraq and Syria. He joined the fight against U.S. forces in Iraq and was jailed by the Americans. He became a commander within the group known as the Islamic State of Iraq. He founded an Al Qaeda affiliate in Syria and then broke with Al Qaeda and ISI, striking out with his own group to oppose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Islamic State Increases Attacks on Iraqi and Kurdish Forces

The Islamic State terror group has increased its attacks on Iraqi and Kurdish security forces, killing nearly two dozen people in the last month, according to Iraqi officials.

Local government sources and public statements show that a wave of IS bombings and hit-and-run attacks, affecting largely the territories disputed between the Iraqi government and the Kurdistan Region, have killed at least 21 people and wounded dozens more.